A Review of Amptify
First of all, what is Physical Therapy for your Hearing?
Amptify is a mobile-app-based hearing healthcare program focusing on aural rehabilitation. It was founded in 2015 by a world-renowned research team at Washington University in St. Louis, funded to develop products for those with hearing loss to help improve communication.
How does it work?
Amptify has features that include support from a professional hearing health coach and peer community, auditory/cognitive training games, and an interactive curriculum. There are several modules within the curriculum that help you understand your type of hearing loss, discover effective listening tools and tricks, how to control your listening environment, minimize communication breakdowns, calm the mind and maintain auditory brain skills. It will help you go past your diagnosis and your new technology to learn strategies to help you rehabilitate and strengthen your sense of hearing.
When you begin, you’ll answer a series of questions to assess where you are in your hearing journey.
Within the app, you will set goals, as well. You are able to see daily content, play the games, and view your progress throughout the 12-week program. You will also be able to chat with your peers and your coach -you are not alone as you learn these new skills!
When logged into the app, you can access the auditory training games. There are thirteen different games to choose from. Within each game, there is information explaining how to play and what skills are being trained. The auditory skills may include noise tolerance, speech perception, and word identification. Your performance indicators are available to you throughout the program, as well.
The games are not only fun but flexible!
The program is designed to increase in challenge, however, you have the ability to select the level of difficulty. The background noise may get louder, the words come faster, or you have to remember longer sequences of words. An orientation is provided when you login. You may also use Amptify on a personal computer if that is your preference. I personally did not play video games and refused to allow a console in the house. When I play games on the computer, they are usually word games (who doesn’t love their daily wordle!). So, when it comes to playing games on the computer, I am hardly an expert. These games are not hard to figure out, and great computer skills are not necessary. You will log in to the site, choose your game, and move the cursor with a mouse. That is about it. A couple of games require you to use the arrow keys on the bottom right of the keyboard, but that is the extent of it.
Be patient. Try each game. Work with your hearing health care provider and Amptify hearing health coach.
I read the description of each game before playing it, but there is no substitute for experience. So, if you don’t do well the first time you play. So what? That is the point. Learn as you go. Get in that daily practice, challenge yourself and you will see your scores increase, and your hearing health journey will be well on it’s way! We want you to be successful in navigating our noisy world! Having fun while learning – What is better than that?!
Happy Hearing!
